Kerry Calls for Patient Strategy in Afghanistan

WASHINGTON  Calling for a broad, patient war strategy, John Kerry, the chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, said Monday that Gen. Stanley McChrystal, the American military commander in Afghanistan, was trying to do too much in a relatively short time.

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Senator Kerry, who traveled recently to Afghanistan and Pakistan, said his conversations with General McChrystal covered the importance of a “smart counterinsurgency” approach.

“But I believe his current plan reaches too far, too fast,” Mr. Kerry said at a gathering here of the Council on Foreign Relations, an independent research organization.

While Mr. Kerry did not mention numbers for the troop strength he would like to see in Afghanistan, he seemed to differ, at least implicitly, with General McChrystal, who is believed to be seeking up to 40,000 additional American troops. There are about 68,000 United States troops there now.

Alluding to his and the country’s experiences in Vietnam four decades ago, Mr. Kerry called for a “redefined strategy” that would focus “on what is achievable as well as critical, and empower the Afghans to take control of their own future.”

The senator said the United States must be both patient and realistic, and that “a sustained, long-term commitment to the Afghan people,” on civilian as well as military fronts, is essential to avoid a failure that would have enormous implications.

At the same time, Mr. Kerry said the United States need not create “a flawless democracy” in Afghanistan, nor vanquish the Taliban “in every corner of the country, or create a modern economy.”

“We don’t have to control every hamlet and village,” Mr. Kerry said, using language reminiscent of America’s futile war in Vietnam. But Mr. Kerry asserted that, unlike the Viet Cong, the Taliban did not have broad, deep support among the common people, which he said portended well for eventual success in Afghanistan.

The senator, Democrat of Massachusetts, was instrumental in persuading the Afghan president, Hamid Karzai, to agree to a runoff rather than claim outright victory in the recently hotly disputed election, and he called Monday for continued efforts to root out corruption and incompetence in the Afghan government. And he said Washington’s allies must share the burden, in providing troops to battle the Taliban and in assisting the still-young central government in Kabul.

“I am convinced President Karzai understands the need to make some changes,” Mr. Kerry said in a question-answer session. “I’m confident there are going to be some changes.”

Responding to a question about the delicate subject of the president’s brother, Ahmed Wali Karzai, who has been accused of drug-trafficking by Afghan and American officials, Mr. Kerry said that he had asked United States intelligence and law-enforcement people for “the smoking gun  the evidence.”

“Show me,” the senator said he demanded. “What do we know? And I tell you right now, folks, nobody has, nobody has, nobody’s given me the hard-and-fast” of the illicit activities the president’s brother is accused of.

Mr. Kerry said the United States was right to begin a military campaign in Afghanistan because the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks were spawned there. And the United States is right to persist there now, he said, despite what he called the “gross mishandling” of the effort under the Bush administration.

The mission is vital not just because the Taliban allowed Al Qaeda to flourish in their country but because an unstable, Taliban-ruled Afghanistan is intolerable next to a volatile Pakistan with nuclear weapons, Mr. Kerry said.

In calling for a self-governing, stable Afghanistan  and not necessarily one built on the American model  Mr. Kerry said one question must remain paramount. “We need to ask ourselves at every turn: ‘Will this help the Afghan people take responsibility for their country?’ And where the answer is no, we probably shouldn’t be doing it.”